Ansible 2.4

Ansible 2.4

Core Engine Freeze and Module Freeze: 15 August 2017

Core and Curated Module Freeze: 15 August 2017

Community Module Freeze: 29 August 2017

Release Candidate 1 will be 06 September, 2017

Target: Mid-September 2017

Administrivia and Process

Starting with 2.4, all items that are deprecated will be removed in 4 major releases unless otherwise stated.
- For example: A module that is deprecated in 2.4 will be removed in 2.8

Python 2.4 and 2.5 support discontinuation

Ansible will not support Python 2.4 nor 2.5 on the target hosts anymore.Going forward, Python 2.6+ will be required on targets, as already is the case on the controller.

Python 3

Ansible Core Engine and Core modules will be tested on Python 3
- All Core modules now have at least a smoketest integration test.Additional coverage is welcomed to find more bugs and prevent regressions.
Communicate with Linux distros to provide Ansible running on Python 3
- Python3 based Ansible packages are now available to run on Fedora Linux

Ansible-Config

Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #35.
Initial PR of code found in ansible/ansible PR #12797. (done)
Per plugin configuration (depends on plugin docs below). (WIP)
New yaml format for config (possibly pushed to future roadmap)
Extend the ability of the current config system by adding an ansible-config command and add the following:
- Dump existing config settings (working, fine tuning)
- Update / write a config entry (pushed to future roadmap)
- Show available options (ini entry, yaml, env var, etc) (working, fine tuning)

Inventory

(done, needs docs)- Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #41.- Current inventory is overly complex, non modular and mostly still a legacy from inception.

Facts

Configurable list of ‘fact modules’ for gather_facts (done)
Fact gathering policy finer grained (done)
Make setup.py/facts more pluggable (done)
Improve testing of setup.py/facts.py (done)
Namespacing fact variables (via a config option) implemented in ansible/ansible PR #18445. (done)Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #17.

PluginLoader

(pushed out to future release)- Over the past couple releases we’ve had some thoughts about how PluginLoader might be better structured

Load the loaders via an initialization function(), not when importingthe module. (stretch goal, doesn’t impact the CLI)
Separate duties of PluginLoader from PluginFinder. Most plugins needboth but Modules and Module_utils only need a PluginFinder
Write different PluginFinder subclasses for module_utils and perhapsModules. Most Plugin types have a flattened namespace and are singlepython files. Modules include code that is not written in python.Module_utils are vastly different from the other Plugins as theymaintain a hierarchical namespace and are multi-file.
Potentially split module_utils loader for python from module_utilsloader for powershell. Currently we only support generic module_utilsfor python modules. The powershell modules always include a single,hardcoded powershell module_utils file. If we add generic module_utilsfor powershell, we’ll need to decide how to organize the code.

Static Loop Keyword

Pushed to 2.5
Deprecate (not on standard deprecation cycle) with_ in favor of loop:
This loop: will take only a list
Remove complexity from loops, lookups are still available to users
Less confusing having a static directive vs a one that is dynamic depending on plugins loaded.

Vault

Support for multiple vault passwords. (done)
- Each decrypted item should know which secret to request (done)
- Support requesting credentials (password prompt) as callbacks
Ability to open and edit file with encrypted vars deencrypted, and encrypt/format on save

Globalize Callbacks

(pushed out to future release)- Make send_callback available to other code that cannot use it.- Would allow for ‘full formatting’ of output (see JSON callback)- Fixes static ‘include’ display problem

Plugins

Allow plugins to have embedded docs (like modules) (done)
Update ansible-doc and website to generate docs from these ansible/ansible PR #22796. (ansible-doc working, todo:website)

Group Priorities

(done)- Start using existing group priority variable to sort/merge group vars- Implementation for this in ansible/ansible PR #22580.- Documentation of group priority variable

Runtime Check on Modules for Blacklisting

(pushed out to future release)- Filter on things like “supported_by” in module metadata- Provide users with an option of “warning, error or allow/ignore”- Configurable via ansible.cfg and environment variable

Disambiguate Includes

Create import_x for ‘static includes’ (import_task, import_playbook, import_role)
- Any directives are applied to the ‘imported’ tasks
Create include_x for ‘dynamic includes’ (include_task, include_role)
- Any directives apply to the ‘include’ itself

Windows

New PS/.NET module API (in progress)
Windows Nano Server support
Windows module_utils pluginloader (done)
Refactor duplicated module code into new module_utils files (in progress)
Evaluate #Requires directives (existing and new: PS version, OS version, etc)
Improve module debug support/persistence (done)
Explore official DSC support (done)
Explore module intermediate output
Explore Powershell module unit testing (in progress)
Explore JEA support (stretch)
Extended become support with network/service/batch logon types
Module updates
- Split “Windows” category into multiple subs
- Domain user/group management modules (done)
- win_mapped_drive module (done)
- win_hotfix (done)
- win_updates rewrite to require become
- win_package changes required to deprecate win_msi (done)
- win_copy re-write (done)

AWS

Focus on pull requests for various modules
Triage existing merges for modules
Module work
- elb-target-groups #19492, #24583. (done)
- alb #19491, #24584. *(done)
- ecs #20618. (in review process)
- Data Pipelines #22878. (in review process)
- VPN #24385. (in review process)
- DirectConnect #26152. (connection module in review process, several more to come)

Azure

Expose endpoint overrides (done)
Reformat/document module output to collapse internal API structures and surface important data (eg, public IPs, NICs, data disks) (pushed to future)
Add load balancer module (in progress)
Add Azure Functions module (in progress)

Google Cloud Platform

New Module: DataProc
Support for Cross-Region HTTP Load Balancing
New Module: GKE

Network Roadmap

Removal of _template modules *(done)
Distributed Continuous Integration Infrastructure (done)
RPC Connection Plugin (done)
Module Work
- Declarative intent modules (done)
- OpenVSwitch (done)
- Minimal Viable Platform Agnostic Modules (done)

Contributor Quality of Life

All Core and Curated modules will work towards having unit testing. (edit: integration and/or unit tests)
More bot improvements!
- Bot comments on PRs with details of test failures. (done)
Test Infrastructure changes
- Shippable + Bot Integration
  - Provide verified test results to the bot from Shippable so the bot can comment on PRs with CI failures. (done, compile and sanity tests only)
  - Enable the bot to mark PRs with ci_verified if all CI failures are verified. (done)
- Windows Server 2016 Integration Tests
  - Restore Windows Server 2016 integration tests on Shippable.
    - Originally enabled during the 2.3 release cycle, but later disabled due to intermittent WinRM issues.
    - Depends on resolution of WinRM connection issues.
- Windows Server Nano Integration Tests (pushed to future roadmap)
  - Add support to ansible-core-ci for Windows Server 2016 Nano and enable on Shippable.
  - This will use a subset of the existing Windows integration tests.
  - Depends on resolution of WinRM connection issues.
- Windows + Python 3 Tests
  - Run basic Windows tests using Python 3 as the controller. (partially done, not all planned tests running yet)
  - Depends on resolution of WinRM Python 3 issues.
- Cloud Integration Tests
  - Run existing cloud integration tests as part of CI for:
    - AWS (done)
    - Azure (done)
    - GCP (pushed to future roadmap)
  - Tests to be run only on cloud module (and module_utils) PRs and merges for the relevant cloud provider. (done)
- Test Reliability
  - Further improve test reliability to reduce false positives on Shippable. (ongoing)
  - This continues work from the 2.3 release cycle.
- Static Code Analysis
  - Further expand the scope and coverage of static analysis. (ongoing)
  - This continues work from the 2.3 release cycle.